


the physicians of a mind diseased

by athousandwinds



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Gen, M/M, Yuletide 2007
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-21
Updated: 2011-01-21
Packaged: 2017-10-14 22:53:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/154345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athousandwinds/pseuds/athousandwinds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Francis loves words. He just wishes they worked for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the physicians of a mind diseased

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ji](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Ji).



> The title is a quote from Aeschylus, "Words are the physicians of a mind diseased". Thanks to Jessat Blue, an efficient and invaluable beta. <3

Language has always been a source of fascination for Francis: the sounds, the monophthongs and diphthongs, the accents people put on one syllable and not another. He likes the way every word means something, even if people have forgotten what.

Richard didn't - doesn't - like accents, Francis knows. Or rather he likes one and despises all the rest. He cultivated an upper-class accent very carefully, which makes his occasional mistake all the more jarring. Bunny used to imitate him, exaggerating the Californian drawl. It was irritating enough that Francis understands fully why Richard might have _wanted_ to kill Bunny. He is still not fully clear on why Richard might have done it.

Except it was Henry, of course, Henry who drew him in with golden words and engineered confessions. Richard wants to be needed even now; then he would have done anything to be one of them. It's all of a piece with that accent, pretending that he knows what he's doing. Henry let him compare himself to Bunny and come out the victor for once; the better man. Only Bunny had morals of a sort and Richard has none to speak of any more. But he does make for superior company.

Superior, from Latin. Straight from it, in fact, which means that the word has been in one language or another for so long that everyone has forgotten why the word makes one's lip curl and another's hackles rise. Henry was always very superior, which irritated Francis. So was Julian, which didn't.

"Baby," Priscilla says, and Francis winces. It seems unfair that _baban_ , a word with high pedigree (German, if not Greek or Latin) should be reduced to this in her mouth. "Baby, do you want pink or green in the bathroom?"

So long as the two aren't together, Francis doesn't care. He tries to convey this with a shrug, but her blank look reminds him why language was invented in the first place. "Green," he says, as it's the least offensive thing she's come up with to do to his house so far today.

He wonders who first came up with the names for colors and if blue is "blue" to him because that what everyone else calls it, or because it sounds right. On the whole, he thinks whoever it was got it right. Blue is cold despair, the way your hands look when they've lost all feeling in the snow. Francis thinks idly of dyeing his hair and dismisses it. He's not so good an actor that people can't take one look at him and see what he thinks of this whole palaver. He doesn't need to color-code himself.

Γαμος, he thinks. It sounds like "game" and means "marriage", which is an example of how ridiculous etymology can get if you think about it too hard. Marriage has always been a business, since civilization began. Then again, if one must marry, one might as well marry someone one can play Monopoly with and combine the two.

Priscilla can probably play Monopoly better than Francis can; she's trading up by marrying him. He's Boardwalk and Park Place all rolled up into one - "rolled up" being the operative term, since he has no money of his own any more - and he was never any good at board games anyhow. Henry, naturally, was fantastic at chess.

Priscilla is waiting until the day his grandfather dies; she's only taking Francis on hire-purchase until then. That's fine by Francis, of course: there's a word in Greek, αποπεμπω, which means "divorce". It also means "send away" and if she won't go then Francis will. The house is full enough of memories that being here makes him sick, but even those are preferable to it being made over in her style as she's making Francis over in her style.

She makes language over in her style, all "baby" and affected Hollywood drawl. She mutilates words, robs them of their meaning, and yet they have power: money and his grandfather's authority make it so. It's the thing Francis finds most unbearable about her, the way she can spoil a word by mispronouncing it or making a mockery of it with her accent. He's learned to hide his Greek books from her; it hurts too much to come into his study and find her blinking at Æschylus.

Even gods do not fight necessity, however, and Francis never has. "Μη χειρον βελτιστον," he says to his grandfather one day, at the risk of angering him further. His grandfather doesn't understand a word and probably thinks Francis is cursing at him, but he only grunts and turns a page of his newspaper. Francis isn't swearing, he saves that for days when he's truly frustrated and Camilla is there to smile with him at everyone else's confusion. But "μη χειρον βελτιστον" is what Henry said to them all numerous times. The least bad choice is the best. Francis is hardly using it out of context; marrying Priscilla is a form of self-murder he has not previously tried and it will be slow and tortuous.

"Francis," Richard says when he comes to visit the last time before the wedding. "It's not too late, you can stay in my apartment if you need to - "

"Βαλλ εις κορακας," Francis tells him, not because he is angry but because he is tired and, yes, frustrated. Richard subsides, with a look so heartily sympathetic that Francis grits his teeth and wants to hit him.

Francis would say the wedding goes off without a hitch, but would that that were true - the whole point is to _get_ hitched, after all. He feels like someone venturing down into the Underworld, except that he of course is nothing like a hero, Greek or otherwise. Priscilla does resemble Cerberus, though - she may not have three heads, but she's certainly a bitch.

Camilla giggles and for a moment she seems just like her old self again, before - before the Bacchanal, just after they started learning from Julian. Francis wants to comment wryly that he and Priscilla will undoubtedly end up killing each other, but it wouldn't be funny. To commit the same sin twice is not the sign of a wise man.

It is not until six months - a year? - after the wedding that Charles appears. This is half a lie, which is worse than no truth at all, because Francis knows that it was exactly eight months and twenty-two days. Charles saunters into the drawing room at 11.33AM and by 11.43 has Priscilla spellbound and his grandfather furious.

"I'll give you all the money you like to go away again," Francis says, the moment they're alone. But language is only one of the ways they've communicated and he knows Charles won't take him seriously unless Francis says it in Greek, while they're fucking.

Charles stays - at a nearby hotel - for three weeks. Francis goes to see him every day, though he tells Priscilla he has business in town. Charles is louder and more responsive than ever: whispering "I want you" into Francis's neck, moaning into his kiss, keening when he comes. It takes Francis a week to realize that this is because Charles has decided if he's going to be a prostitute, he's damn well going to act like one. After that, fucking him in even the best hotel seems just a little bit sordid.

"You should invite your college friends round more," Priscilla says one day after he leaves, and Francis goes cold inside; a lump of ice in his stomach spreading the chill outwards. "I liked that Charles."

After that, Francis can never be certain Charles didn't fuck Priscilla the first day he was there, before Francis pushed him off the premises. He never lets him within ten miles after that, except when Charles asks. Charles always asks. It would be simpler to say that Francis lets Charles do whatever the hell he wants when he deigns to visit him, because he is so pathetically grateful to have Charles there.

"Why do you do this to yourself?" Richard asks. Rhetorically, less because he doesn't want a reply than because he doesn't need one. Richard will happily scrape up any crumbs Camilla lets fall from her plate, too.

Words have power. Richard knew this when he taught himself the Vermont accent. His grandfather understands legalese, better than Francis does. Priscilla doesn't know much about words; she has a very small vocabulary, but she knows that she can use them to ruin Francis. Francis -

Francis has devoted his life to studying words so that he can use them to his own advantage, so that he can conquer rather than be conquered. None of it works. Still the loopholes of a last will and testament twist round and bind his hands; still Priscilla uses endearments delivered in a high-pitched voice to pitch blows at him. Still the power of one word, one name, causes him to act like a stupid, lovesick idiot, to be reckless, to be devastated.

"Charles," Francis says, because he's back again. "Γνωθι σεαυτον" was written over the entrance to Apollo's oracle at Delphi. It means "know thyself". Francis does.

He just wishes it helped.


End file.
